No soil? No space? No problem. Your vegetable garden just got a whole lot easier

So you want to start a home garden, but don't have the outdoor space? Not a problem. You could build yourself a planter box, but you'd still have to mess with soil and fertilizer. And what if you want to grow vegetables year-round? Again, not a problem.

Hydroponics, where you grow plants and vegetables in what amounts to tubs of water, has been around for more than a century. And doing it at home has just gotten a step easier. That's thanks to an Israel-based company called Living Green, which makes ecosystems for urban dwellers.

City dwellers in Israel have a farm's worth of produce thanks to a Living Green hydroponics system. (Photo: Facebook)

Their latest product is called a Living Box, which allows you to grow up to 30 different kinds of vegetables at home, no matter the season. Living Green's Nitzan Solan, an alum of Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, describes the system in the video below.

The whole system, which is transportable and only needs about 10 square feet of space, works on solar power and doesn't require electricity. That capability has allowed them to easily bring their Living Boxes to African nations like Ethiopia and Ghana, where the Israeli company has established educational aquaponics systems in local schools. Their work goes hand-in-hand with that of the Israel-based non-profit Innovation: Africa, which is installing solar power throughout many villages in developing countries.

A new rooftop garden atop a mall in the coastal Mediterranean metropolis of Tel Aviv is already employing these hydroponic techniques. This urban farm takes up only 8,000 square feet and produces some 10,000 heads of leafy greens per month.

"We can grow three or four times more than in the ground. We've seen instances around the world where you can grow 50 or 100 times more than in traditional agriculture. So we've seen this can be a very good solution for the future in order to feed people inside of cities," the rooftop garden's Lior Turgeman told From The Grapevine.

The field of hydroponics is just one area where Israeli innovation with water is taking shape. Watch the video below to see other creative ways in which the Mediterranean country is helping the world conserve one of our most important resources.

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Benyamin Cohen
writes about everything from science to entertainment – and sometimes about dating apps for dogs.